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A (Mostly) Stay-at-Home-Mom
Welcome to A (Mostly) Stay-at-Home Mom, where I share insights about finance and family. I'm Charmaine-- a wife, mom, writer and obsessive home baker, and I hit record each week to share about adding to household income as a busy mom.
We'll laugh, we'll cry, we'll discuss strategies for navigating both the home economy and the world economy hand in hand. Braiding each other's hair not included (yet).
Looking for more? I've got a ton of resources, including blog posts to match each of the podcast episodes, on my website: https://bycharmaine.com/
So glad you're here.
A (Mostly) Stay-at-Home-Mom
SEASON FINALE: Navigating Tradeoffs in Motherhood
In the last episode of season 2, Charmaine discusses a key part of motherhood that is rarely discussed: the tradeoffs. Join in on this honest conversation, as Char brainstorms different ways to navigate decision-making and tradeoffs with grace.
Hi there and welcome to another episode of the Mostly Stay-at-Home Mom podcast, where we chat about entrepreneurship, mom life and earning a side income as a busy mom. I'm your host, charmaine, and I am so glad you're here. This is the last episode of the season, so if you're just joining us or missed some, I'll quickly go over the titles from this season if there are any episodes that you're interested in. We started off the season with a guide to a gentler postpartum I had just come out of. I think it was three or four months postpartum that I wanted to share all of my ideas for that period, right after having a baby. So check that out if you want ideas. Then we went into an interview with my friend and she talked about her journey from being a teacher to a mom, to a YouTuber, and then we had the episode when motherhood doesn't go as planned and then nobody talks about this the mental load of decision making in managing home products. Then we had five Amish and Mennonite side hustle ideas for moms and crafting for cash. Is a handmade business worth it? Is writing and self-publishing a good gig for moms? Can content creation actually bring in cash? Is a handmade business worth it? Is writing and self-publishing a good gig for moms. Can content creation actually bring in cash? And last episode, which was work from home, part-time and MLMs all about those topics. So I am not sure when the new season will be starting up. Again, if you want to rejoin with me and not miss anything, make sure you subscribe to the show and leave a rating while you're at it, because, again, I am just kind of a one-woman show. I'm doing this all by myself. I don't have official production plans so I can't officially tell you when the next season will be out, but I am already planning and dreaming for it. I definitely want more interviews and to go deeper into some of these household management, family side income ideas for you, and so if you've been here and you've joined me for a lot of these episodes so far, just thank you so much for being here, and there will be another season, god willing, but I don't know when it will be, so make sure you subscribe.
Speaker 1:Today's episode is all about the trade-offs we make in motherhood. It may seem obvious when I say this, but I need to constantly remind myself of this that every choice is a trade-off. Every time we say yes to one thing, we say no to other things. That's the way it's always been. That's just sort of a law of life. We only have this one life and as much as I would wish there would be 20 different versions of me, of different lives I could lead, I think we have this distorted view Thanks in part to how we consume media through social media.
Speaker 1:It has impacts on our lives. Social media ignores trade-offs. A lot of media ignores trade-offs and I have a hard time seeing the difference between a lot of media nowadays and just marketing. Right? Marketing propels the positives of one thing and it doesn't really focus on the drawbacks. Obviously, because they want you to consume whatever product they're advertising, and I see that a lot in social media too.
Speaker 1:The content is curated. I mean, no one is showing everything and no one should have to. By the way, I mean, I am a content creator and I am not showing you every piece of my life, obviously, but we need to be aware of this trade-off right? And let's say you are consuming content from a cooking channel or something you might watch all of the beautiful recipe videos the creator has published. That creator has chosen, in this example, to make recipe videos instead of doing other things. They're kind of narrowly defining their niche and making videos about their niche and it's kind of this self-perpetuating cycle, like more people respond to that, so they make more videos, and so it might be shocking to a lot of us who follow these creators like, let's say, a cooking influencer doesn't do just cooking. They're obviously a multi-dimensional human being, but that's all we see of them online, right? And we have to be aware of the fact that, to make this content, these people are saying yes to making the content and no to other things, right? So there's a trade-off there.
Speaker 1:Again, it seems obvious, but what happens when all we see is one side, not the trade-off? So we might be scrolling and come across the perfect looking cooking video from one creator, then a really nice looking workout video from another creator, then an immaculately decorated home design video from someone else, and as we begin adding all of these bits and pieces together in our minds, we begin filling our minds with these pictures of inspiration and perfection and we begin creating expectations for ourselves. Whether it's conscious or not, we kind of collect all of these in, maybe like a mental Pinterest board of sorts. But these are false standards, I would say. Nobody is doing it all. No one can have perfect everything. You might see a collection of perfect cooking, gardening, home decorating and parenting content on one sitting, and then you hold up your average messy, mistake-ridden life up to it and start feeling discontentment that it doesn't measure up.
Speaker 1:I think we really need to be careful about taking the best from all of these other people, combining it and creating our own ideal out of it. There's nothing wrong with gathering inspiration, but I think it's the combination of all of these things becoming one like huge super life that we're trying to go after, and we can't go after it all, of course. So, yes, you want to make homemade bread from freshly milled flour, like that video on Instagram you saw, and there's nothing wrong with that. I follow recipe videos sometimes and it's fun and I think it's great, but realize that the content creator who chose to make the bread and the video did that instead of doing something else. So do we want to make the bread and the video did that instead of doing something else. So do we want to make those trade-offs as well? I think sometimes we want the lives of the creators, we want that outcome, we want, you know, whatever they've created, but we don't realize all of the production costs, all that went into it, so we're not aware of the trade-off. It can be hard to realize these trade-offs, so it's important to keep in mind that as we go about life, and especially as moms.
Speaker 1:Let me paint another picture. Let's see if anyone falls into this, but I think this happens quite a bit. Let's say you had a fulfilling career and everything, but then you got married and had a child and you are just so in love with your new baby. You're ecstatic, but you have a typical maternity leave and you try to return to that full-time job after maternity leave. But after a few months you just find this, this whole workload of managing home and work life, untenable. Every day you come home stressed, exhausted, unable to complete any home duties, and, not to mention, you are missing your child after having them in someone else's care all day. You cannot juggle the job of caring for your child and responsibilities at home. Your husband might be helpful and understanding, but with him working too, you both are kind of drowning in these piles of laundry. Too many fast food runs, you know all of the things that are adding up that neither of you has time for. So after looking at finances with your husband. You make some hard decisions, you cut some expenses, you go really lean, but you go all in and you decide that you are quitting your job to be a stay-at-home mom. Yay, finally a chance to fully throw yourself into caring for your family and home.
Speaker 1:Your first few weeks go great. You are so thankful, for instance, that you're hanging out with your baby on a random Tuesday at 10-15. You're able to get a healthy, homemade dinner on the table most nights. You're able to focus on your child and even make it to a few mommy and me classes at the library. But over time you grow in your discontentment. As a stay-at-home mom, you try to take on the sourdough, a lovely heritage baking method. You're stretching and folding your loaf during nap times and freaking out about flour and water percentages. And then you may embark on creating an herb garden and a vegetable garden and a flower garden.
Speaker 1:You're so inspired by a creator you saw on Instagram that you decide you want to sew your own clothes. So, before you know it, you are sourcing fabrics from online and in person and threads and notions, and you buy a sewing machine. You're buying patterns, you're cutting them out and you are trying to sew your own clothes. Then you also want time for date nights with your husband, family camping trips, hosting other friends for dinner in your home, being involved with church or community activities, all inspired by content you saw on social media. Before you know it, you begin to feel as busy and overwhelmed as you did before you quit your job.
Speaker 1:Quitting your job should have freed you up to have more time to focus on your family and your home, freed you up to have more time to focus on your family and your home. But now, through you know, pursuing other things that are good, by the way, but not understanding how all of these things are a trade-off, you've taken on so much more and become just as overwhelmed, if not more, as when you had that other job. So none of these things are bad, by the way. They're good things but, like lifestyle creep, is a phenomenon that gradually hikes up your cost of living. This can be another form of lifestyle creep. I guess you could call it time or schedule creep. These things are taking up your time, energy and money and it's hard to see the trade-off.
Speaker 1:Social media can be inspiring, but it can also give us these unrealistic expectations about our lives. We want to do our best and be our best in every area of life, just like the collection of photos and videos we see every day. But this is not realistic, right? There are trade-offs. You know you might want to be like the creator of Ballerina Farm and somehow have seven kids. Does she have seven kids? A farm, do beauty pageants, make sourdough and make gorgeous homemade meals, keep up a garden a small business. You know she seems to do it all, but really I admire her.
Speaker 1:I realized that a lot of these people, these creators, have staff, they have people to help them with things. They've outsourced a lot of things and we're not seeing that on the other side of the screens, right? So it will always, I think, be sort of a struggle as a homemaker, but it is up to you to see and decide at this season of life, at this period we are, you know, what things do I want to do myself and what things do I want to outsource, because, again, no one is doing it all. So I really just wanted to focus on this topic again because I need reminded of it and I think it's good to remind others of it, with how big the impact that social media has on our lives and just our viewpoints. It really shapes our views. To remind you of these trade-offs that no one is doing at all and, as the runner of your home, you will have to decide what things to outsource and what things to do yourself.
Speaker 1:I am looking at a photo of my mother's family from the 1950s and 60s. I'll try to paint the picture of the photo. It's a really nice photo. My mom grew up in rural Pennsylvania with five siblings, so there were six kids and her parents, and in this photo the whole family is gathered around a metal kitchen table maybe a linium, I don't know with a simple dinner. Spread on top of the table there's a plate of peas, a serving plate of some sort of meat, there are glasses of water flanking each setting and there's a package of sunbeam bread. The family looks truly happy. My grandma is wearing her apron and a tired smile, her elbow on the table propping her head up. She looks truly happy and so do the kids.
Speaker 1:I asked my mom what they typically ate in their everyday lives for dinner and she said vegetables from the garden, with some sort of cut of meat that they got from a local farm. They would buy, you know, a large share, a beef share, from a farm and keep the cuts of meat in the freezer and use a cut of meat for each dinner. It sounds so simple and far more homegrown than I'm used to. You know the garden, fresh vegetables, the locally sourced meat and I'm willing to bet more homegrown than a lot of us are used to. But even when my grandmother was growing their own food in a garden and using locally sourced meat, she still bought grocery store bread, the sun-beaten bread. So that was her trade-off and I think about it a lot.
Speaker 1:Social media again seems to promote the more extreme ways of thinking and again, it's not bad to be inspired. But I think in this day and age, people emphasizing healthy food which there's nothing wrong with, but emphasizing the healthy food would say that every single aspect of a meal would need to be like at the peak health level. And yeah, I think it's important to realize that it's not always realistic. So even within one meal you could have some things that are outsourced and some things that are not. And then, if you think of your week of meals, sometimes you might make it homemade, sometimes you might make something like a convenience meal, like very simple that's like already mostly prepared, and then sometimes you might go out to eat, sit down at a restaurant and sometimes you might get takeout or fast food. We do all of the above in our house and I try to make sure things are mostly homemade, but I also really appreciate the trade-off of having someone else make food if we're doing something else or busy that night or trying to avoid a lot of dishes. You know there's this balance and only you can decide what the percentage needs to be in your family. But I don't think we need to feel down on ourselves. Of course we can always do better with health and nutrition and meals, but we don't have to also condemn ourselves for doing some trade-offs for time and cost if that's what we need to do in our life.
Speaker 1:As another example of trade-offs, one meal that I did recently I was wanting to do burgers and I wanted to try a homemade burger bun recipe. I was just really craving some good homemade burger buns and we don't always make ours homemade, so that's a trade-off that I sometimes make, but this time I wanted to test a recipe and, yeah, just enjoy some soft homemade burger buns. So, and I knew that was going to be sort of an undertaking and I didn't want to stress about all of the other things going with our burgers, so I kept the menu extremely simple. We did burger cheeseburgers with the homemade buns and then also on the side I did like a can of Bush's baked beans and that was the meal. It was more than enough. I mean, it sounds simple and maybe you know you're thinking, oh, that wouldn't be like enough variability for our family. What about the vegetables? Yes, I know, sometimes as a quick veggie I like to keep a raw homemade sauerkraut from a local maker here in town. I always try to keep our fridge stocked with sauerkraut, so that's an easy veggie if I'm not doing one myself. But yeah, so that was an example of a trade-off meal.
Speaker 1:I did make the buns homemade and they turned out amazing. This was from a Joshua Weissman recipe and they turned out really good. I love it. It's like I always test these recipes and then I want to make sure I keep them for future reference, that that one is a keeper. And it was sort of a to-do, especially this recipe. It was a tricky, time-consuming recipe but in the end it was all worth it. I had that quick extra side dish item to make the meal a realistic meal for our family that night.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's something even easier, like stupid easy Grilled cheese, cereal, ppnj boxed mac and cheese, like we're not afraid to pull out the stupid simple recipes, and other times I go vastly complicated. I'm that person who's like, oh yeah, I'm going to make homemade everything for this meal, but it just depends, you know, and so you're going to have to be the judge of that, and I think that's what gets exhausting for the homemaker and for the person deciding these things, unfortunately. At least first, I think the first step is being aware that of these trade-offs and the fact that you'll have to constantly re-evaluate. As long as we're aware of it, that's the first step. The second step, like I said, is re-evaluating based on what you need. I mean it could change day to day, honestly, like which trade-offs you're going to make.
Speaker 1:You might be in seasons of we're focusing on health, so you know whatever we need to buy. You know the trade-off would be trading off economics or cost. You know, regardless of cost, we're going to pursue health as a stronger goal. Or maybe you're in a season where you need to focus on finances, so you try to make that trade-off and you buy cheaper foods, and this is I'm just talking about meals and meal planning. It could relate to so many other aspects of the home, but hopefully, to give you those examples. So you'll have to pretty much constantly make these trade-off decisions, and I know that is probably what makes it so.
Speaker 1:So tiring is kind of this decision fatigue. I know when I'm at the grocery store we're both trying to save money and stay healthy. So we have those two goals and also just the goal of like enjoying the food too. So I have that all of that in my mind and I can tell, like some things I'll like spend extra money to make sure it's a healthy product, and then I'll kind of like get tired of doing that and I'll buy something else that's like cheap, to like save money, tired of doing that, and I'll buy something else that's like cheap, to like save money, but it's not as healthy maybe. So I can already tell in one grocery trip I try to honor both goals and I make trade-offs that are different in a single grocery trip too. So it's just interesting.
Speaker 1:But I think if we're aware of all of this, then we can kind of be like okay, aware of all of this, then we can kind of be like, okay, I can face this. Now, you know, I know that our family goals will change and our priorities will change, so the trade-offs that we make will be changing, and just kind of expecting that it does become sort of an invisible labor situation. And if you're having a hard time articulating this to like your spouse, maybe you could just I don't know inform your husband if you have one, like I'm having a hard time trying to find what takes priority right now, can you help me with this decision? And you could ask him for help making decisions and kind of share that load. But you know, I also don't think we should be resentful of this kind of invisible workload. I do think we can face it with optimism and we can face it with realism.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the first step is just acknowledging that there are trade-offs and realizing that what we're seeing around us, like on social media, the more time we spend on phones and screens, the more time we spend on phones and screens, the more time we're just inundating ourselves with this view that there aren't trade-offs and there are, you know. So I would encourage you. A lot of our modern problems probably stem from our overuse of technology and screens and just these addictive apps, and a lot could be solved by kind of reining that in. And I speak to myself first and foremost. I definitely want to have more control over my phone time and I'm striving to do that. I think in the next season I want to do some sort of phone challenge, some sort of screen challenge where we're not spending too much time on it. But again, I'm not trying to shame people. It's the world we live in and we have, I think, consented to this without knowing the full trade-off. I think we're discovering a lot of the negatives of the apps and social media, but we did not realize all of that when we signed up, probably, so we just thought it would be a fun way to share updates and photos with our family and friends, and then it just has become so much more than that as we're discovering. So, yes, if you're interested in some sort of challenge and talk about screen time as it relates to homemaking and side income, next season I do plan to do that because, honestly, if you are spending so much time online, that means you are not spending time either A with your family on tasks that need to be done in the home or B on some sort of side income position. So really it relates to my whole niche here.
Speaker 1:On the podcast, right, there's so many people, myself included, who are overwhelmed, who don't think they have time, and there's an element of that. I won't argue with that. We all just have 24 hours in a day. But really really dig deep and be honest with yourself. Because I'm going to be honest with myself, is the screen time a trade-off that you're making when, if you spent less time on the screen, you would have more time to do these things for your life, your family, your community, you know? So something to think about the trade-offs in life.
Speaker 1:It's not sexy to talk about. It's not one of the trending, you know, topics. That's because a lot of what we're surrounded with, honestly, is marketing, marketing and politics. They're not going to mention the other side of the story or the trade-off. They're always, you know, tending to mention the side they want to advocate for without seeing the drawback, right? So we're going to be aware of the trade-offs. We're going to make these decisions judiciously. Sometimes you make it very quickly. You have to make these decisions in an instant sometimes, and that's okay.
Speaker 1:Try not to let them all just weigh you down. If you need to share some of that load with your spouse, I encourage you to maybe have a conversation. See how much decision making you can put on the kids if they're older, you know. But I encourage you to maybe have a conversation. See how much decision making you can put on the kids if they're older, you know. But I do want to leave you with that encouragement to be aware of the trade-offs and just to face this sort of workload as a homemaker with optimism. Encouragement because we all face this but no one really talks about it because, again, it's like an invisible type of labor that we're doing. But I think it's worth it. Right, it is worth it, even if it gets overwhelming at times. Try to turn down that noise. And so that is what I leave you with.
Speaker 1:I hope you start thinking about some trade-offs that you can make, and you know they can go from small to big. Maybe your trade-offs today will be grabbing dinner from a restaurant and then you can tackle some random chore that you have been putting off. I think that's a good thing, and don't let the the baking and the cooking influencers make you think otherwise. They probably make money off of that, right from the little things to the big things, some bigger life trade-offs. I like to think long term, like what are some bigger life trade-offs you are making? Maybe you are in a season where you are giving up your career to stay home with your children, like to me.
Speaker 1:I think that's a worthy and noble trade-off and I know it's hard to make the finances work with that. Even if you have a spouse who's working too, it can still be difficult with the cost of things. I get it. But really being honest with ourselves and saying, can we make this work? Can we cut costs in some ways, I think the trade-off of staying home with your children, at least while they're young, is going to be valuable, and maybe there's a time when the kids get older and you could potentially go back to work. You know you can kind of discuss this with your spouse. What are the different variations of your life that you plan to take? Obviously, not everything always goes to plan, but you can look at your life and your goals long term and you can think about the trade-offs. So I would definitely want to encourage you if you're feeling the financial pressures but you're making it work and staying home with children. It's a worthy and noble thing to do again, and so I do think it is an awesome trade-off to make, as we are moms Perhaps you are also a mostly stay-at-home mom and I want to encourage you in that trade-off, just for all the the well-being of you and your family.
Speaker 1:Your employers certainly miss you, I'm sure, but you are irreplaceable in your home. So to just give you encouragement in that trade-off and stick around for more episodes that kind of acknowledge that tension between work and home for the modern woman, I totally I get it and that's why I'm here. I want to give encouragement and like useful, realistic tips for navigating, you know, kind of both of those worlds if you need to. So thanks for being here. I really appreciate it. Again, stay tuned for season three and subscribe for when exactly that comes out, and I will see you in the next one.
